Services Positioning in the National Research and Education Network A New Approach to the Product...

Services Positioning in the National Research and Education Network

A New Approach to the Product Life Cycle

Zbigniew Krzewiński

Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center

[email protected]

TNC2006, 17th May 2006

Structure

1. Introduction

2. Coming back to clasics – Life Cycle Model

3. A new approach

4. Use cases

5. Promotion (communication)

Introduction

The necessity of the marketing approach

• New technologies

• Alternative solutions

• Demanding users (customers)

• Some external pressure for the cost reduction

Coming back to clasics (Theodore Levitt – 1965)

Services Sales

Introduction Growth Maturity Decline

Time

•A sequence of product stages from introduction to growth, maturity and decline

•A practical instrument for the effective fight with the market competitors,

•Impacting the marketing strategy and Marketing Mix:

•Product - Customer Value

•Pricing - Costs

•Place – Convenience (Distribution)

•Promotion – Communication

Coming back to clasics – introduction stage

Services Sales


Time

Building service awareness and develop market for the product, M.MIX approach:

Product: branding and quality level established,

Pricing: low penetration pricing or high skim pricing

Distribution: selective untill the product is accepted

Promotion: aimed at innovators and early adopters – building awareness and learning

Coming back to clasics – growth stage

Services Sales


Time

Building the brand preference and increasing the market share:

Product: maintaining the quality, additional features and services may be added

Pricing: maintaining the initial strategy

Distribution: new channels are added, demand is increasing

Promotion: aimed at broader audience

Coming back to clasics – maturity stage

Services Sales


Time

Defending the market share while maximizing profit:

Product: feature may be enhanced to differentiate the product from that of competitors

Pricing: lower because of the competition

Distribution: more intensive, some incenitves offered

Promotion: emphasizes the product differentiation

Coming back to clasics – decline stage

Services Sales


Time

Sale is declining so there are several options:

Maintain the product, possibly rejuvenating it by adding new features and finding new uses

Reduce costs and continue the offer

Discontinue the product

A new approach (Youngme Moon, HBR 2005)

Services Sales


Time

There are at least three possible strategies of the services positioning:

• Reverse positioning

• Breakaway positioning

• Stealth positioning

However, no two processes are alike

A new approach - Reverse positioning

Services Sales


Time

Stripping away “sacred” product attributes while adding delightful new ones,

Building the brand preference

Increasing the market share Examples: Jet Blue, RyanAir

A new approach - Breakaway positioning

Services Sales


Time

Associating the product with the radically different category (for packaged goods mostly)

Examples: Swatch, Apple’s ipods

A new approach – Perfect situation

Services Sales


Time

A permanent growth…

A new approach - Stealth positioning

Services Sales


Time

Acclimating customers to a technologically intimidating or not yet refined new offering

Examples: Sony AIBO

Use cases (Helicopter View)

Generally the following groups may be indicated (Tanenbaum):

• Resource sharing (technically by client-server machines communication mostly allowing for sharing computing power, for example),

• Personal communication (like e-mail communication),

• Communication between institutions (like B2B, C2C or P2P)

• Communication between an institution and its customer – e-commerce (B2C) or between the government and the customer (G2C),

• Mobile services,

• Security and authentication services,

• Home networking.

Use cases (Helicopter View)

Several network categories may be found:

1. Network and connectivity services,

2. Security, authentication and mobility services,

3. Hosting and content distribution services,

4. Communication and conferencing,

5. Remote access to the resources.

Use cases

PSNC is R&D Center in the following areas:

Portals – several modern portal frameworks have been developed for the distributed environments (PROGRESS – together with SUN Microsystems) and several ones were deployed mostly for the education area (interkl@sa, FRANTICE – French eLearning) or for eGovernment (MIM – information service for the city of Poznan or systems for the management of the education).

Grid technologies – several IST Projects gave a lot of interesting results to deploy. There is wide initiative to deploy all the results in the industry called Gridge – Enterprise Solutions – several tools for the industrial exploitation

Modern networking – new and own infrastructure – new solutions such as IPv6 support and several QoS

Security – the new systems and algorithms are being developed and deployed – some of them for the financial sector as well

Use casesServices Sales


Time

Reverse positioning:

Elimination of some benefits adding more service options in exchange for

simplicity and surprising perks,

However, adding more and more service options confuses consumers.

The strategy is dedicated to the existing products and well known categories. It is rather rare strategy for the product positioning in the networking – mostly

because there are new technologies and solutions.

Use cases – Radio streaming

•More and more popular service in the PIONIER Network.

•In fact it is still the growing phase as the „product” is still under development, however some new platforms are being developed.

•The reverse positioning here means new offer with the same services for the permanent customers (users) as well as for new comers.

And many more - about 20 streamings in total…

Use casesServices Sales


Time

Breakaway positioning:

Dedicated to the tangible goods mostly.

Consumers easily adapt to new features as offerings evolve and

welcome fresh options, particularly in mature products.

The best example of such a strategy is the licensed software.

One of the examples of such approach in PSNC is dLibra – digital library software.

Use cases - dLibra

Initially it was dedicated mostly to the virtual publishing houses

Presently it is being deployed as the digital content system management for libraries.

Jelenia GóraJelenia Góra

OstrówOstrówWlkp.Wlkp.

2002 (WBC)

2004

2005

dLib

ra

2006

GorzówGorzówWlkp.Wlkp.

About 20 deployments in total

Use cases

Stealth positioning:

Moves a product out of the category that consumers may resist and place

it in a more desirable category.

Mostly dedicated to the new technologies which product

consumers perceive as difficult to use.

The best example of such approach is the interactive television distribution model discussion. It is a project but it works as a prototype and many

important events could be watched by the users.

Services Sales


Time

Use cases

Innovative home network solutions.

Known entertainment with some revolutionary services

like video on demand or a possibility of watching the

whole program or movie without publicities.

A useful tool for the tele-education

Use cases

The final busines model is still being discussed. Mostly

depends on the content owner and manager – Polish

Television TVP.

However PIONIER (Polish NREN) is an active player

here. It is ideal environment for so called second mile

infrastructure (different scenarios).

Different access possibilities: PC, PDAs and Set-Top-Boxes

Use cases

Some very efficient examples of the international broadcasting: TORINO 2006 Olymipc Games

Frederick Chopin Piano competetition

Solidarity movement aniversary

Promotion (Communication)

The promotion activities supporting the new services deployment and development may be devided into two general ways:

1. Technically awared persons

2. General audience (present and potential users)

In all the presented strategies the promotion in the phase of the product growth is dedicated mostly to the general audience. Each of the mentioned ways needs different approach and tools:

1. The Conferences, seminars, training courses and exhibitions national and all thorough the world: iGrid, Supercomputing events (USA), IST events, eChallenges (EU), EUSEA (Singapore), IST-Africa (Pretoria) etc. – the product/service designing and R&D phase

2. The close cooperation with media: press, TV and radio. The indirect contact is sometimes more efficient.


TNC2005 has opened the way to the frequent contact with the press


• After the TNC2005 PSNC is cooperating with about 20 journalists and almost each press release gives about 5 to 10 publications or TV&Radio news items,

• A public mission makes the contact with the press easier than the commercial companies do,

• R&D center gives many possibilities of releasing some brand new solutions and/or systems,

• The technical cooperation is also an additonal plus,

• The frequency with the publications allows for building the brand of the innovative and creative entity.

Summing up…

Services Sales


Time

Just a way to consider in the strategic planning,

Allowing for refreshing the offer for the current as well as for the new customers,

The efficient promotion of the brand new services may be easier for the public entity.

Thank you

Zbigniew Krzewiński

[email protected]

Services Positioning in the National Research and Education Network A New Approach to the Product...

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